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Heart-stopping

At the last contact meeting before adoption, our girls’ birth mother told them she would find them. Whatever happened, she said, she would know them by their ears. I anticipate that will require some explanation. Both girls have ear deformities which consist of a lack of cartilage in the helix of their outer ear. If you take the top of your ear and fold the top over, you will get the idea. With little Sophia, it is more pronounced.

Sophia is a bouncing rubber ball of unrestrained impulse, humour and generosity. She is mercurial in mood and movement. One minute she is joyfully dancing in her flamenco dress, then despairing over a sum or tearing into some Lego. She is neither contemplator nor brooder – she bounds from moment to moment with the world in her tiny wake.

We have a ritual at bedtime. I walk into her room singing “I am looking for a beautiful girl” to the tune of Madonna’s Material Girl whilst she lies giggling under the duvet. I express my amazement that she seems to be missing and then send a hand in under the duvet to tickle her to the surface. We talk about the day and then move on to “kiss questions”. She nominates the topic and she gets kisses for right answers, tickles for wrong ones. Every day for a week she has asked for questions about the supper we left out for Santa at Christmas.

Curious, I asked her why she had picked that topic. She looked away and then back at me, her face full of worry and her eyes wide. “The other girls at school say my ears are different”.

In an instant, I felt hollowed out. I had the realisation that must come to all fathers that for all the promises you have made you cannot roll the earth flat before your children and make straight their path to happiness.

“Oh, Soph, you are the most beautiful girl in the world.”

“My ears aren’t like yours though are they?”

“No. We could get a doctor to change them if you are unhappy.”

She looks away again, and pauses for a heartbeat.

“No, I like my ears”.

I don’t need to reshape the world for a girl with her courage.

Meanwhile the bed next to hers is empty. Sara is away at Brownie camp – her first adventure away from us. Having dropped her off, P stood at the door casting round for an excuse to go back. This is the first tiny step to independence. I am so very proud of her.

“In an instant, I felt hollowed out. I had the realisation that must come to all fathers that for all the promises you have made you cannot roll the earth flat before your children and make straight their path to happiness.”

Ahhh… I can’t think of anything I would want more for you than these moments of bliss. I know it’s not easy. I know it’s work. And yet, I’m so deliciously happy that you and P “have” to do this work. Continued blessings – of course.